So long S. Boston Post Office (annex)

[whighlander]

It's not almost abandoned. CSX does a freight round-trip to/from Everett Terminal 7 days a week, and MBTA and Amtrak equipment transfers almost every day. It averages 3-4 total moves per day..... If there's a vibration concern, they already experience it every single day and built those labs while experiencing it every single day. It's a prior condition, and they know there has never been a cap on how many trains can be run over it....Class 3 (59 MPH) passenger track with continuous welded rail, new ties, regraded ballast, and new grade crossings is not going to rattle the same. Nor will passenger locomotives passing by at 40 MPH and (especially northbound heading towards Kendall) coasting off the long Cambridgeport straightaway. And, as noted, MIT and every lab in the area knows it's an active rail line. Not only an active rail line, but one that was historically double-tracked with many sidings. ....This isn't a new proposal; that's been the chosen Urban Ring routing for years--right up through Phase III heavy rail configurations--and this Worcester-North service has been periodically studied before...... Cambridge Center isn't some bedroom community like Hingham where people have nothing better to do but tend to their picket fences. A commercial center that's all big business, all big-University, and no residential will play ball with something that enhances their locational value. Every time, as long as there's something in it for them. It was politically unwise for Murray to just throw it out there off the cuff without first making the behind-the-scenes case that there's something in it for them.

FLine ... You might be right about the vibration at a crawl versus the less heavily loaded hypothetical passenger comuter rail. However when it comes to EM effects the faster the worser. The EM effects are difficult to characterize without a extensive measurement program (a colleague of mine was one of the world's leading experts in such things when he was at the Volpe Center and now that he has retired -- he's busier than ever as all Environmental Impact Statements now cover EM effects quite extensively.

Anyway as to the fact that the plans were there and the tracks were there -- its mostly irrelevant as the technology has changed dramatically and the need tor the high resolution imaging is much geater than someone might have anticipated een 10 years ago.

As I said earlier -- many B$ are at stake in the developments neat to the GJ ROW-- and if the ROW for the Grand Junction through Cambridge is an issue -- it will have to move rather than the potential siting for many of the properties in Kendal sq. / Cambridge Center / MIT / Novartis/ Pfizer (610 Main St.)

 

[HenryAlan]

Put the Grand Junction to use, and move all that stuff to the SPID.

 

[whighlander]

Put the Grand Junction to use, and move all that stuff to the SPID.

Nice idea but where are you going to find an availble square mile (give or take) in the SPID to once again make MIT into "Boston Tech" --- " From The MIT Press Classics Series: When MIT Was "Boston Tech"
1861-1916 by Dean Samuel C. Prescott"

I think that once MIT used a Cleopatra-like barge to formally cross the Charles at the inviation of the Mayor of Cambridge in 1916 -- that was pretty much the MIT version of "crossing the Rubicon"

" in 1911 when then-Mayor William Brooks wrote Richard Maclaurin, MIT president, inviting the university to “cross the river and make Cambridge its permanent home .... “Such an institution is to my mind a blessing and not a burden upon the community,’’ Brooks had written, prompting the university five years later to ferry its faculty ceremoniously across the Charles." -- see the Boston.com story ---
As MIT rises, so does its city: School’s growth a financial, cultural boon for Cambridge